25th June 2000 Archive

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Intel wants caviar, not cod roe, from IA-64

Column Peregrinations of a roving Vulture

A stretch of water was all that separated the King of Sweden and the King of the Itanic, Craig Barrett last week. And, we were assured by an earnest cab driver in Stockholm, you can still catch big fat salmon in these waters -- a fact certain to delight Intel's "Ice Man", a lover of outdoor pursuits. The fat salmon which Intel …

Channel 25 Jun 2000, 10:34
T-Online bins Freeserve poker game

High roller walks the walk

T-Online, the German ISP owned by Deutsche Telekom, has ended talks to buy Freeserve, Sunday Business reports. The newspaper attributes the collapse of the £6 billion bid to "cultural differences", with the Germans "said to have been worried that Freeserve's management, under John Pluthero, might have left the company following …

Business 25 Jun 2000, 11:50
Watch out cyberkids… the Feds will get you

WCIT 2000 Hey kids, leave the Web alone

James S. Gilmore III, chairman of the US advisory committee on electronic commerce and governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia -- and whose title is almost as lengthy as this story will be -- issued a stern warning to cyberterrorists at the World Congress of IT this morning. Said Gilmore: "Cyberterrorism is a potential threat …

Software 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Odigo fights back against AOL

It's a little guy versus a big guy kinda thing

Plucky little instant messaging outfit, Odigo.com, has re-established contact with AOL's monster IM system despite having access blocked over the weekend. AOL pulled the plug on Odigo.com just ten days after the little Web outfit launched its latest software. At the time, Avner Ronen, Odigo's VP of Strategic Development, said …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Some like it Hotmail

So why are they complaining?

There's no such thing as a free lunch, as 330,000 Hotmail users found out last week. Following a server breakdown, these people were locked out of their Hotmail free email accounts for 10 days. And when the server was powered up and back online, many found that all their data, including addresses and saved messages, were lost …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Children-for-sex offered for sale on Net

FBI arrests man

The FBI has arrested a US man for attempting to buy two children on the Net for the purpose of engaging in sex. Fifty-three year-old Jonathan Christopher Wood, from Georgia, was prepared to pay £8,000 for the boys, according to Reuters. The FBI's Crimes Against Children Taskforce, which monitors paedophile activity, made the …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Oftel caves in to BT demands

Not as tough as it makes out

Oftel has been accused of pandering to BT over technical guidelines for unbundling the local loop. Last week the winged watchdog stepped in to force a decision on key technical issues. It intervened because of an alleged stalemate between telcos and hardware suppliers over the guidelines. At the time, David Edmonds, Director …

Data Networking 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
AOL cans IM outfit

Victims quite disappointed

AOL has blocked users of its instant messaging(IM) software from mingling with those loyal to small-fry IM outfit, Odigo.com. AOL pulled the plug just ten days after Odigo.com launched its latest software. "We are quite disappointed that AOL has responded to our interoperability in this fashion", said Avner Ronen, Odigo's VP …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
UK in Internet success shock – Cisco

WCIT 2000 Countries which don't get it have had it

Countries which don't take Internet technology seriously will fall behind others which do, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, said at a press conference here this morning. And, apparently, Tony Blair, who couldn't use a PC before he became UK prime minister in 1997, does take it seriously, Chambers added. Blair has talked to Chambers …

Data Networking 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Anarchists and Thatcher unite over RIP

The bill comes with a £46 billion price tag

The government's Web monitoring bill may cost British industry £46 billion, a report warned yesterday. The British Chamber of Commerce revealed details of a report on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill, which claimed the government had "substantially underestimated the cost of compliance of ISPs". It put the …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Chase Manhattan bulldozes URL from IT minnow

Bankers by name, bankers by nature

Chase Manhattan Bank has forced a small IT consultancy to hand over its domain or face costly legal action. Employees at Chase Business Solutions are so incensed by the bank's bullying tactics they've decided to deliver the shirts off their own backs in a coffin to the monster bank on Friday in protect at its actions. "We've …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
First Web site killer trial starts

Chat room 'Slavemaster' in dock over five murders

A Kansas man known as "Slavemaster" in online sexual chat rooms is due to appear in court tomorrow, June 15, accused of killing five women. John Robinson has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder. The bodies of two women were found stuffed in 55-gallon barrels on his farm in Linn County, Kansas. Three more were …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Straw hits back at RIP Bill critics

Confirms reputation for libertarian thinking

Jack Straw, the home secretary, has hit back at critics of the RIP Bill. In a letter to today's FT, he dismissed estimates from the London School of Economics that the Bill could lose Britain up to £46 billion in lost ebusiness as "wildly exaggerated". And he ticked off the FT for giving credence to the LSE report, in an …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Sub £200 Internet TV hits the streets

Fiddle with your knob while playing with your Bush

Computer-shy Brits can now get their own portable TV with built in Web access for under £200. Television manufacturer Alba started shipping the Bush Internet TV to retailers this week. The product is available in with 14-inch screen and costs £199, while a 21-inch model is expected to retail at around £300. Alba, a company so …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
AltaVista exposed

Questions, questions, questions...

The Free Internet Group's (TFIG) High Court claim has lifted the lid on AltaVista's delayed bid to offer unmetered access to the Net earlier this year. Aside from whether the allegations are true or not - that will be for the court to decide if it gets that far - the claim documents the steps leading up to AltaVista's public …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Spam filters don't work shock new survey

The truth always hurts

Spam filters designed to weed out unsolicited email don't work, according to the findings of a recent US study. The tests - carried out by eTesting Labs (formerly known as ZDNet's in-house techies) - measured the "effectiveness and accuracy of server-level anti-spam solutions employed by email service providers, irrespective of …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:00
Where the hell are… DDR chipsets?

Updated Rambus puts Tom Pabst in memory sandwich

Many a weary trek around the three Computex halls failed to provide even one example of a motherboard based on double data rate (DDR) memory, despite the noise and fury of that contingent this year and last. So where are these rare birds? Even representatives of Via, which has pushed DDR like there's no tomorrow, could only …

Channel 25 Jun 2000, 12:02
Toshiba DDR Dramurai domino falls to Rambus

All in all, it's just another brick in the wall

Anyone old enough to remember the fab TV footage from the 70s when a new type of fever gripped the Japanese, and we saw gazillions of DIMM size dominoes falling all in a row? Because, in news that has a great deal of relevance for the PC industry, Toshiba last night became the biggest memory player to bite the Rambus bullet and …

Channel 25 Jun 2000, 12:02
Mentor attack on Cadence blown to bits

Skullduggery left, right and centre

Normally, legal tussles in the wacky world of EDA are pretty dull fare, but when a judge accuses one of the CEOs involved of widespread fraud, fabricating evidence and staging break ins to their own property... Now pay attention at the back, this is a tad complex. When Chip designer Cadence bought out Quickturn just over a year …

Business 25 Jun 2000, 12:02
AMD acts to save mobo makers' faces

Guarantees Slot As a-plenty after Via shift

Taiwanese major manufacturers who faced ending up with a million useless Via mobos using the KX-133 chipset have been saved by AMD largesse, it emerged today. Last week, we reported from the Computex show in Taiwan that up to a million motherboards using the KX, rather than the KT-133 Via chipset were lying a mouldering in …

Channel 25 Jun 2000, 12:02
Situations Vacant Wanted SysAdmin for Vulture Central

Are you an experienced SysAdmin? Are your Perl skills unparalled? Do you know Linux as well as Linus does? If you do, The Register wants to hear from you. Now. Because we've grown so quickly, so far over the last 18 months, we now need someone to take full charge of Vulture Central's increasingly complex Web server set-up. We' …

Site News 25 Jun 2000, 12:09
BOFH: What the Microsoft break-up really means

Episode 21 ***DUMMY MODE ON***

BOFH2000: Episode 21 So I'm doing some equipment audits, which basically means wandering around peoples’ desktops while they're away and making sure that what the service database says they have, and what they REALLY have, correspond with each other. Not a challenging task by any stretch of the imagination... And as per usual, …

BOFH 25 Jun 2000, 12:17
BOFH gets Blood on His Hands

Episode 22 First aid tips for Bastard Operators

BOFH 2000: Episode 22 So, as part of the Company-wide lip service to Health and Safety, anyone in an area deemed potentially dangerous has to go on a First Aid refresher course. And wouldn't you know it, because of a minor statistical anomaly in the workplace accident figures, the Computer Room is found to be the most dangerous …

BOFH 25 Jun 2000, 12:17
Site News The Register moves home, intros new design

We make our mistakes in public

Today, The Register swaps Web hosts. We're moving lock, stock and barrel to Level 3's colocation facility in London. The domain remapping should kick off at 12pm BST and it will take 48 hours or so from then to complete the propagation to our new IP address. Bear with us. In recent months, The Register has been bursting at the …

Site News 25 Jun 2000, 12:18
Site Update Register readers have their say

Your comments on the new-look site - and how we're addressing your concerns

First of all, many thanks indeed to all of you who have emailed us with your thoughts on The Register's new look and feel. It's become something of a cliche to say the readers' response was overwhelming, but this time at least it's true - we've had hundreds of emails, far too many, alas - to respond to each of you personally, …

Site News 25 Jun 2000, 12:18
Readers' Letters Euthanasia and the Blue Screen of Death

Flames ain't what they used to be - and much, much more

Where did all the flames go, WAP, BT Surftime, Euthanasia and the blue screen of death, advice for investors, good riddance to Atiq Raza, Don't be so horrid to Chile, poor people ain't the crooks, TLAs, Who really spreads the viruses, Web retailers, Cindy Margolis, some rare fan mail. Back in the bad old days I rather enjoyed …

Letters 25 Jun 2000, 12:19
Crackers use search engines to exploit weak sites

People post some incredibly dumb things on the Web

The recent proliferation of point-and-drool GUI utilities for brute-force password cracking has led many crackers and Script Kiddies to overlook a powerful and quite obvious tool available to all, the common search engine. With a bit of ingenuity, anyone can skirt basic password authentication and go straight to the goodies on …

Music and Media 25 Jun 2000, 12:19